Jackpotting Around: A Utah Jazz Podcast · Art Cummings and Chad Lowe

Episode 39: Are we in DAinger? Fake Trade Ideas - Walker Kessler

·1 hr 38 min·4 clips

Is hiring your son to run an NBA team ever okay? These Jazz fans have thoughts.

Jackpotting Around starts with Chad Lowe and Art Cummings joking through a very specific kind of family-and-front-office awkwardness. The opening centers on nepotism, graduation, and how hard it is to trust the setup when the wrong person seems to be getting promoted by default. That leads into the show’s usual mode, where the joke lands, but the basketball point still matters. Once the episode gets past the setup, the focus shifts to Walker Kessler’s extension and what the Jazz should actually pay him. The hosts treat that number as more than a number, because it changes depending on what the team does with the rest of the roster. If John Collins and Collin Sexton stay, the Kessler decision looks different. If the Jazz move other pieces, the pressure on Kessler changes too. That is the kind of conditional thinking the show does best. They are not just asking whether Kessler is good. They are asking how much sense it makes to lock him in before the rest of the shape is clear. From there the episode gets into practical contract ranges. One guess lands around five years and 150 million dollars. Another lands closer to five years and 175 million. Five for 200 gets treated as too rich. The Hartenstein comparison becomes part of the argument, with the team-option structure making the headline number look bigger than the guaranteed money. The hosts keep coming back to the idea that the Jazz should negotiate harder, especially when the extension comes a year early. That gives the discussion a sharper edge than a simple salary guess. There is also some pushback and self-correction, which helps. They do not just echo each other. They test the numbers, the timing, and the incentives. The tone stays casual, but the content is specific. It is about cap mechanics, roster direction, and whether Kessler should be treated as a foundation piece or a movable asset if the team takes a different path. The episode closes on appreciation for the listeners and a sense that the audience has grown, which fits the show’s scrappy, direct relationship with its own fan base. It feels less like a polished studio product and more like two Jazz fans thinking out loud in public before the front office forces the issue.

As heard by us

A Jazz conversation that turns Walker Kessler's future into roster math.

Jackpotting Around spends most of the episode on the uneasy question at the center of any rebuild: whether Walker Kessler is a core piece, a trade chip, or some mix of the two.

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Why you'd press play

Want the Walker Kessler extension debate without the polished gloss?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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